QI

Series 14
- Episode 6
Night

Review

by David Butcher

Because the theme is “Night”, everyone comes in pyjamas. And it turns out to be one of those QIs where you feel it’s less a panel show, more a chance to listen in while comedians shoot the breeze, more or less at will.

David Mitchell recalls the time people came to his school to teach circus skills. (He’s still cross: “I was seven. What I needed was maths!”) Noel Fielding describes how he once had a job in a bakery, and lasted four hours before his boss came out and caught him lying on the floor eating eclairs. Alan Davies and Mitchell compare notes on having to get up in the night to wee. And Holly Walsh reminisces about sleeping in a car boot.

It’s as if Sandi Toksvig has thrown a drinks party with no drinks but the odd left-field query to prod the conversation (“What does the EU have against nightingales?”). But be warned: we learn something – possibly spurious – about hotel kettles that once heard is hard to forget.

Summary

David Mitchell, Noel Fielding and Holly Walsh join regular panellist Alan Davies and host Sandi Toksvig to contemplate the theme of `night'. As usual, correctness and even intelligence go out of the window in this quiz, in which the questions are so difficult points are awarded for the answers its questionmaster finds most interesting.